I'm one of those people fascinated by discussions on Neanderthals. This week, I sat through a podcast where a PhD guy sat and discussed this one odd difference between modern man living in this same age as the Neanderthal folks.
When you go and talk about a crowd of Neanderthal living in some cave or some location....the number goes from five to fifteen. Modern man in the same era? It could be as low as twenty but typically got into the 120-range (yeah, a tribal unit).
Why? No one has figured this element out.
You would think that with zero birth control and lusty relations going on....typically every two years, the Neanderthal gals were delivering new 'troops' to the clan. Were they more susceptible to disease or early death? Unknown. Was it simply bad luck and one out of every births lead to a death by age ten? Was there some weird ritual going on where someone was sacrificed every six years?
The problem with a low number in the tribe 'game'....for defensive purposes.....you just never can be sure of some fight with the other tribe on the far side of the valley. You might wipe most of them out in a hour-long battle and find two members of your clan were wiped out as well.
Were they just territorial and always inclined to fight over a forty square mile space with any intruder clan?
It's a silly question but you just wonder if the Neanderthals just never grasped that there was safety in numbers.
1 comment:
I believe the family group was matriarchal, with two or three breeding-age females to as many as fifteen males of all ages.
.
From my research, I get the impression the female leaders of the family were probably in constant competition, creating conflict and drama for the entertainment value.
At the risk of ethnocentrism, I base this on current attempts by breeding-age females to drive group dynamics... utterly unqualified for the leadership position, and inevitably, destroying group cohesion.
.
Extrapolating, I think this continuous conflict drove the most productive members to join other groups and tribes.
This constant churning of loyalties destroyed the potential family bonds simultaneously with the incursion of:
* faster breeding, and
* far more violent and destructive
invaders from Afrika.
The invaders were -- and are -- genetically uninterested in forming long-term family units, and instead, focused on quick valueless laisons with any available partner.
.
I wonder if those breeding-age females invested their energy in destroying their competition instead of producing viable off-spring... wasting their breeding years, then dying barren and unwanted.
Post a Comment